by C. L. Werner
It was from these jumbles of wreckage that more attackers emerged to confront the Iron Warriors. The sentinel killed by Rhodaan at the entrance was but a precursor to the ambush that had been prepared for them. Up from behind the piles of scrap, out from the shadowy holes that lined the walls, a mob of pale-skinned hybrids confronted the intruders. Lasguns, autoguns, shotguns, all blazed away at the armoured giants. A pair of cultists kicked over the corroded frame of an ore-cart to expose the vicious muzzle of a heavy stubber. A huge rebel with three arms leapt atop the chassis of a mine-cart to rake the Space Marines with a bolter captured from the Sororitas.
The furious fire crackled against the thick armour of the Iron Warriors. Before the hybrids manning the heavy stubber could open up, Uzraal sent a blast from his meltagun into their faces, reducing cultists and cover alike to a puddle of molten waste. Mahar blasted away at the rebel with the bolter, sending him tumbling down to the floor in a gory heap.
Rhodaan loosed a burst from his pistol, ripping through a hybrid that rushed at him from one of the alcoves, a shock maul clenched in her hands. The maimed cultist flew back, crashing against the jumbled machinery behind her. The warsmith’s gaze was drawn to the gaunt figure that stood exposed when the scrap collapsed under the corpse. He was a tall and emaciated example of the xenos-infected cultists, adorned in a robe of dark purple. Rhodaan could sense the strength rippling around the hybrid, but his attention was quickly diverted to the golden box he held tucked beneath one arm.
‘You should have left that where it was,’ Rhodaan told the hybrid. He lumbered towards the robed cultist, his chainsword cleaving through the bodies of those rebels who rushed out to block his path. The thin treacle of hybrid blood dripped from the whirring teeth of his blade as Rhodaan advanced. The almost placid way in which the cultist watched him draw near gave the warsmith pause. He had no time for whatever trickery gave the fanatic such confidence. Raising his pistol, he was ready to wither the thief in a burst of shells.
Pain! Raw and unrelenting, as searing as a hot blade pressed against his skull, brought Rhodaan to a halt. The bolt pistol dropped, his arm falling to his side as every nerve in the limb screamed at him in agony. The same torment rippled down his sword arm and it was only with a fierce determination that he forced his fingers to retain their grip on the chainsword.
Rhodaan could see the awful grin that showed on the inhuman visage of his foe. No mere cultist, this was the magus himself, the xenos witch Cornak had feared for so long. Bakasur was using his psyker powers to afflict the warsmith, to violate his very mind and reduce him to helplessness.
Grim pride swelled within Rhodaan. He was a veteran of the Long War, a champion of the IV Legion. By his own hand he’d risen to become warsmith of the Third Grand Company and Lord of Castellax. It was more than determination that enabled an Iron Warrior to survive and achieve so much. Tenacity, endurance, and, above all, defiance were the things that kept him going, the bitter compulsion to prove his martial quality against any foe. He would not submit to a xenos witch on some ignominious shrine world!
Rhodaan had the pleasure of watching the smile evaporate from Bakasur’s face as he forced first one foot forwards and then the other. By will alone the warsmith was smashing his way through the psychic torment. Even as the pain swelled, as the magus poured more suffering into his nerves, Rhodaan kept advancing.
He moved forwards and raised his chainsword. ‘Give me the casket, xenos.’
Bakasur shifted his grip on the Warmason’s Casket, fingers curling around the lid as he held it at his side. The sensation of pain racking Rhodaan dwindled while at the same time a ripple of distortion flowed down the magus’ hand and across the box. ‘But a thought from me and your treasure will be destroyed,’ the hybrid warned. ‘Relent if you would save it, Space Marine.’
A growl of amusement rasped from the mask of Rhodaan’s helm. If the magus thought he could threaten Iron Warriors then he understood little of the Third Grand Company and even less of their purpose on Lubentina. ‘It needs better than you to threaten me,’ he swore as he marched onwards.
At that instant the ceiling overhead split open. Rhodaan looked up to see a shape of claws and chitin dropping down on him. Across the vox he could hear the rest of his Iron Warriors crying out in surprise.
Once again, the cult had prepared a layered ambush. While the Iron Warriors cut down the hybrids, Bakasur’s real protectors had moved into position.
The genestealers were on the attack.
Down from the ceiling above, up from the floor below, the Inheritors lunged into action. Bakasur had played for time to allow the genestealers to spring their ambush with the smallest amount of risk to themselves. Into their minds he’d sent the image of each Iron Warrior in the cavern. Timed properly the pure-strains would have been on their enemies from the moment they ripped their way into the chamber from the overlapping tunnels.
The menace posed by Rhodaan and his refusal to be cowed by either mental tortures or threats against the relic had stirred Bakasur’s mind with weak mammalian fear. The genestealers responded to that fear, launching their attack an instant before all was ready. One of the Iron Warriors went down, his legs torn from under him by the genestealer that erupted from the floor at his feet. The other Space Marines, however, were given enough warning to fall back from the immediate danger. Their bolters barked as they fired bursts at their attackers, compelling the genestealers to evade the murderous retaliation. One Inheritor collapsed as the deadly flare from an autocannon ripped through its carapace and sent it pitching across a pile of scrap.
Immediately before him, Warsmith Rhodaan was caught in the talons of the genestealer that had dropped onto him. The rending claws raked across his power armour, scouring the heavy ceramite. But they did so with less power and force than they should have, scratching the plates rather than gashing them, unable to tear through to the flesh within. The answer to the faltering assault was the chainsword that impaled the Inheritor’s chest. In that split second when the genestealer came hurtling down at him, Rhodaan had raised his sword, piercing the creature’s body.
Savagely, Rhodaan wrenched the dying genestealer from his sword. Though the sounds of battle rang out across the cavern, he didn’t turn aside to see how his comrades were faring. His attention was focused, as it had been before, on Bakasur and the relic he held.
‘The casket is mine, xenos,’ Rhodaan stated, a slime of genestealer ichor dripping down his armour.
Bakasur withdrew from his advance. Even if the Inheritors prevailed against the other Iron Warriors, it wouldn’t help the magus. He would be dead, a death that would accomplish nothing to further the schemes of the Great Father. A death that wouldn’t bestow on him the glory of ascension.
As his mind strove for some escape, the sweep of his thoughts brushed across all those nearby. Bakasur found something there that he could use, a thought so keen and vigilant that it blazed like a beacon even through the barriers that guarded the brain that gave it form. Swiftly Bakasur dropped his own psychic defences, stilled his thoughts, folded his mentality down to the faintest ember of awareness.
Rhodaan continued to advance. ‘The casket is mine, xenos,’ he repeated as he raised his chainsword.
He started to swing his blade down at Bakasur when a cry across the vox stopped him.
‘No!’ Cornak howled from across the cavern. The sorcerer stormed out from the tunnel. ‘It belongs to the Circle!’
A blast of psychic force slammed into the warsmith, bowling him over. Rhodaan slammed to the floor, his chainsword digging at the ground. A second blast threw him against the wall. The pain Bakasur had so recently sent to afflict him was nothing beside the agony that now racked his body. Every muscle, every tendon felt as if it were on fire.
Cornak stalked across the cavern, moving with a speed incredible for one burdened down by power armour. When a genestealer sprang at him, a blast of ma
gic from his staff sent it spinning away into the junk piled about the chamber. When Uzraal tried to intercept him, he was thrown back by an invisible malignance that found him slamming against one of the columns.
The sorcerer stopped to glare down at Rhodaan. ‘You’ve been most obliging,’ Cornak mocked. ‘Your little warband has been my sword and shield, my horse and chariot. Now, at the end of things, you kill my enemy and cheat the prophecy.’ He gestured with his staff to where Bakasur stood. ‘But the prize is not for you, and so you’ve outlived your usefulness to me.’
Rhodaan stared up at Cornak, confused by the sorcerer’s words. ‘You’re mad, traitor,’ he snarled. ‘Mad and blind. I never touched the xenos witch.’
Cornak spun around, Rhodaan’s words alerting him to the psychic deception Bakasur had played upon him. Feeding the sorcerer’s treachery, the magus had made him believe the task he required of Rhodaan had been accomplished. To cheat fate and escape the doom he’d foreseen.
The sorcerer hurriedly raised his staff, muttering incantations as he banished the illusion provoked by the magus. Rhodaan could see the ripple of distortion leap from Bakasur’s hand into the ancient staff. The shaft vibrated wildly, the head affixed to it beginning to smoulder and crack. Cornak’s arcane retaliation sent splinters from the staff slashing Bakasur’s pallid skin.
Perhaps the sorcerer should have prevailed despite all his fears and omens. Rhodaan didn’t give him the chance. Lunging up from the floor, he brought his chainsword slashing down across Cornak’s hand, lopping it off at the wrist. The staff, the focus of his powers, slid to the floor. For an instant, the sorcerer’s magic faltered.
It was all the time Bakasur needed. He was gesturing at the sorcerer with a clawed finger, directing a holocaust of mental malignance into Cornak’s undefended mind. The enmity of every cultist on Lubentina fed the magus’ assault. The afflicted sorcerer ripped the helm from his head as he roared in pain. Wisps of vapour steamed away from his boiling brain, colour dissipated from his eyes as they became lifeless, milky things. With an expression of utter disbelief frozen upon his once gloating visage, Cornak crashed to the ground.
The doom the sorcerer had thought to cheat had claimed him just the same.
Rhodaan had no time to capitalise on Cornak’s destruction. Even as he turned towards Bakasur a genestealer came scrambling out from the mounds of junk. The four-armed xenos lunged at the warsmith, hurling itself at him in a cataract of rending claws and gnashing fangs.
Trishala stole down the tunnel following the rearmost of the Iron Warriors. She was as afraid of losing contact with the terrifying Chaos Space Marines as she was of drawing their attention. To confront them would be throwing her life away, but if she lost them she would lose what she knew had become her only chance to recover the Warmason’s Casket.
The roar of combat grew louder as she approached a wide cavern littered with debris from mining machinery. Trishala saw the Iron Warriors striving to defend themselves from a pack of genestealers that lunged at them from behind the piles of scrap and the rockcrete columns that supported the roof. One of the Space Marines had been brought down already, lying mangled at the edge of a pit in the floor. As she watched, a genestealer scrambled up the side of a column and launched itself at another of the Iron Warriors. The alien’s claws ripped down the side of his armour, opening the ceramite along his left arm and raking the flesh within. The stricken Space Marine pressed the muzzle of his bolter against the creature’s head and exploded its skull before it could visit further mutilation against him.
Trishala’s attention shifted from the fighting between Chaos Space Marine and xenos and instead focused on the duel between sorcerer and magus. Sight of the purple-clad hybrid made her pulse quicken. Tucked beneath his arm was the Warmason’s Casket!
The finale of the duel saw the Chaos Space Marine sorcerer felled by a combination of the magus’ powers and the chainsword wielded by one of his fellow Iron Warriors. Trishala didn’t know what provoked the infighting, but it gave her an opportunity. The sword-wielding Chaos Space Marine was soon beset by the genestealers, compelled to defend himself against the lethal xenos claws.
Only one prospect offered any chance to redeem the Order’s honour. The Warmason’s Casket. If Trishala could recover that artefact then at least the disgrace wouldn’t be complete. She looked from the embattled Chaos Space Marines to where the hybrid magus had been. Bakasur hadn’t lingered after slaying the sorcerer. Setting the genestealers against the Iron Warriors he was now retreating down an earthen tunnel. Under one of his arms the jewelled panels of the relic glittered in the crimson light.
Scrambling across the room, Trishala set off in pursuit of the magus. She ignored the threat of the Iron Warriors and their alien adversaries as she dived into the rough tunnel. All that mattered to her now was catching Bakasur and reclaiming the relic he’d stolen.
Sounds of combat receded into the distance. The dull, hellish glow became more pronounced, the air hotter and heavier than it had been in the catacombs. The sensor fitted to Trishala’s arm alerted her to rising radiation levels in her surroundings, enough to prove lethal to an unshielded human if they lingered in such an atmosphere too long. She wondered if these delvings of the cult had reached down to the power plant that supported the Warmason’s Cathedral. She took some comfort in knowing that her power armour would act as a buffer between herself and the radiation, and even greater solace in the fact that once she caught up to the magus she’d have no reason to hang around these toxic caverns.
Ahead, the tunnel opened wider, expanding into a large hall dominated by the gigantic housings of atomic converters, colossal cylinders of titanium and plasteel that rose from the floor to expand into networks of cable and pipe that vanished into the ceiling. Here the reddish glow was more pronounced, vibrating from the walls and pulsating upwards from the floor. Patches of deep shadow filled the corners and the far side of the room. Trishala could see something more than just the barren rock when she peered at the opposite end of the chamber. There was a dull, corroded quality to the surface, suggestive of immense plates of metal buried and forgotten long ago.
Bakasur had stopped running. The magus was actually kneeling before that darkness, extending the Warmason’s Casket towards the blackest patch of shadow. The worshipful attitude of his posture inflamed Trishala’s senses. The hybrid was rendering up an offering.
Before Trishala could set upon a course of action, Bakasur swung around. The magus’s eyes fixated upon her, an eerie light shining behind them. ‘I didn’t know it would be you, defiler,’ he said. The light behind his eyes expanded, enveloping Trishala’s vision completely.
Through the blinding glare, Trishala struggled to bring her surroundings into focus. When she did it was with an abruptness that was nearly as overwhelming as the light had been – and far more disorienting.
She was no longer in the power plant under the Warmason’s Cathedral. Trishala instead found herself in a chamber with ferrocrete walls, pressed on every side by a mass of terrified humanity. The stink of fear was too great to be washed away by the overworked recyclers that struggled to pump air into the security shelter. The moans of fear, the consoling murmurs, the desperate prayers merged into a susurrus of dread. The vision of hundreds packed into the shelter, filling it from wall to wall.
Trishala saw her parents, felt her mother’s hand squeezing her own, heard her father enjoining her to pray to the God-Emperor and hold to her faith in Him. Then there came the screams, the rending sound of alien claws. She saw the traitors among the refugees, watched them holding the rest back while they opened the door.
In a blur of purple and crimson, the genestealers came rushing in. Their jaws agape, the hideous tongue darting out to strike those they came near. It wasn’t death they brought, but something much worse.
Trishala’s father fell silent, grabbed by the cultists and drawn towards the xenos. Her mother’s
hand lost its hold. She was pulled towards one of the monsters and Trishala cried out when she saw the thorn-like tongue jab her mother’s neck. Then she was herself being pushed towards the xenos...
Only it hadn’t happened that way! The aliens had ignored her, focusing their attentions on the adults in the shelter. She’d escaped their clutches. She’d survived. Praying incessantly to the God-Emperor for deliverance, she’d been spared the taint of the xenos.
Trishala prayed again, reciting the mantras that had been instilled in her by the Ecclesiarchy. She fought against the force that compelled her towards the genestealers, struggled against the disorienting sensations that filled her mind. This wasn’t reality, nor were they memories. This was delusion, a manifestation conjured by the magus. Against the psychic illusion, Trishala pitted her own resolve, her faith in the Emperor. By degrees she was brought closer and still closer to the genestealers. She could see one of them turn towards her, its mouth open, the spike-like tongue licking out.
With a scream, Trishala broke the illusion. Before her she saw not the face of the genestealer, but that of Bakasur. His face was an abominable fusion of human and alien, an atrocity of flesh that could not fail to evoke memories of Primorus in Trishala’s mind. The magus drew back in surprise when he saw that Trishala had broken free of his psychic hold.
‘You’ve seen us before. Our brethren on Primorus have been suppressed,’ Bakasur declared. ‘It is to be regretted that they shall never know the wonder of ascension.’ He craned his head to one side, as though listening to some faint voice. ‘The Great Father mourns their sacrifice. Such a waste.’
Trishala shook off the lethargy that lingered in her limbs from the psychic attack. As she moved towards Bakasur, the magus warned her back with a threatening display against the Warmason’s Casket. One motion, and he’d destroy the relic.
